Friday, January 14, 2011

If there's anything causing greater uproar in the school community, its the ever growing empire of bullies. Gone are the days where playful banter, like the occasional wedgie, were the worst the victims had to suffer. Now the attacked face even death- either at the hands of their proprietors or authors of their own demise.

Now it's wonderful that there are resources to battle these bullies, and communities are on the watch to target and attack the worst of them. But.. the sad reality is bullies DON'T go away. In school they are torture, in adult life they shape shift and morph into Bosses with authority complex, sullen co-workers, and pushy neighbors. Unfortunately, for those of us that the law doesn't protect anymore, we have to deal with them the old fashioned way. Outsmarting them.

And luckily, the usual bully is not your average Einstein. The best thing to do is prepare yourself to deal with them from the crib, and when you can no longer rely on the principal to solve your problems, you won't be scared out of your wit.

Mean Bully Shoving Kid into Locker

For one, bullies are HUMAN. Believe it or not, under the scowling, sneering face lies the same skeletal body you have. Punch a bully and your problem will only grow. Learn how his brain works and you've got a person in the palm of your hand. It's not as hard as it sounds. Even bullies have to deal with bullies- even bullies have fears and anxieties- even bullies need friends. How can you use this knowledge to work on your behalf?

In the wonderfully accurate and artistic sketch above, we have an idea of what these bullies are like- larger than life! And with a fear inspiring countenance. This is just a small idea of what poor kids go through every day.

Stay tuned for the following Bullies blogs, and please follow me RSS if you enjoy what you read ;)

10) GeoQpons. Nifty coupon app, simple and easy to browse. By far the cleanest one I've seen, because the others get too confusing or are very limited. I like the local setting and being able to search too.

9) Zedge Ringtones & Wallpapers. Personally I liked the "mom is calling" ringtone, because it was hi-la-rious and so fitting. Free fun and funny stuff, like the transformers ringtone, makes it number 9 on my list.

8) RD3 Demo. So addicting! At your fingertips lies the vast ability to create hundreds of fun little beats and play them back to your hearts content. If you want to record them however, and avoid the time outs it sporadically displays for ads, the full version is under 5 bucks.

6) Top Songs By Year. Although its always running in the background, you hear AND download the top 100 songs since 1960 to present year. Worth downloading if you have that song from the radio stuck in your head or if you have nostalgia for the 80s and want to listen to Yaz all over again while you groove in your car.

5) For the fans of soccer, as I am, your best bet is FotMob 6.0, which tracks every league from every corner of the globe. You can control which leagues you want scores on, and you can also read top stories.

4) Memory Trainer. Score for the edutainment industry! This app is fun and helpful, allowing the noggin to exercise itself and supposedly improve your.. what was it?

3) eMoods is neat, for those of us interested in our emotional status. It tracks your mood highs and lows, quite interestingly enough. Then it displays them in a graph where you can easily see how you've been doing lately.

2) Electric Sleep- Quite possibly the coolest thing developers are testing. It tracks your sleep cycles, records them in graphs, and wakes you up during light sleep, so you don't arise feeling groggy and horrible. I like it because it allows me to see when my sleep is the deepest and why I feel so tired sometimes. Plus, you can always share the results with your Doctor, which is also nifty. As far as number one goes, I'm divided between the Kindle App, and the The Weather Channel. I love the easy read-ness and ability to download free classics, as well as the hour by hour, 36-hour, week and hourly views on the weather.

I continue to plead to developers to create a Netflix streaming app, because c'mon.. why the huge screen if we can't watch our instant queue? Some other neat apps/games you should check out are Unblock Me, Camera 360, Angry Birds, and Google Sky Map.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Okay okay, so I was the first one to bash on Amazon's Kindle. Didn't like the fact that an electronic device was replacing the centuries old method. There's nothing like cuddling next to a fire, or in my case, my electronic heater, and turning page after page of excitement. However, compliments of my wonderful Droid, I downloaded the free app on my phone and it came with three free books. One was Pride and Prejudice, which I have already read. The other was Aesop's Fables. (Not my first choice.) Last was Treasure Island. I'm not really a pirate fan, and could care less for a mad hunt of treasure, but this book really wrapped me in! It took me about three chapters of exposition (because I am one patient reader) to really feel captivated by the plot. Of course, later on the in the story, you understand the need for such background details. The story begins at the Admiral Benbow, a family owned inn where a grouchy, mysterious pirate lodges himself, and overstays his welcome, for about a year. During this time, the son of the innkeeper, and the narrator and main character of the story, is fascinated and simultaneously disgusted at the Cap'n. After his father's sudden death, however, Jim Hawkins (the young son) sees his life flip on him in the most adventurous, and also dangerous of ways. He is invited to embark upon a journey to an island to get his hands on treasure. Through a serious of strange and unfortunate events, friendships blossom, enemies are created, and life suddenly becomes a treasure in itself, proving hard to keep. What I like about this book is that its easy to understand, despite its setting, and Jim explains carefully the situations he's in and what is going on from the angle of a young man. Twist and turns and dangerous encounters make this book not a only a classic, but a fun read. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars. It could have expounded a little more, I believe, towards the end of the story and the lives of the characters, particularly Jim's. But overall, worth to your winter reading list. :)

So you never want to get old. Who wants old saggy skin and raisin wrinkles atop your wrinkles? You're right. Nobody does. But you know what? I'd take raisin face over dead face any day of the week. Because if there's a possibility that the injection I'm about to receive is going to slowly shut down my vital organs- I'll pass.

So why are botulism injections more and more popular?

""BOTOX® is short for "botulinum toxin," the substance that causes botulism, a sometimes fatal form of food poisoning. It sounds scarier than it is; in small quantities, BOTOX® merely interrupts nerve impulses to muscles in the face. The lines that furrow the forehead when you raise your eyebrows, the crow's feet that appear when you squint and the creases between the eyebrows when you frown are all caused by tension in underlying muscles, which contract and squeeze the skin like an accordion. BOTOX® keeps this from happening.

Fortunately, BOTOX® is so diluted that serious side effects like allergic reactions are rare. If the doctor slips, in most cases the worst that can happen is that you will lose the ability to raise your eyelids all the way; or, if you're getting shots around the mouth, a mistake could leave you drooling. But even a perfectly executed procedure has consequences. Depending on which wrinkles you go after, you might not be able to frown or raise your eyebrows or squint." By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK -Monday, Apr. 29, 2002 (Italics & Bold Ours)

I love how this Michael person downplays the seriousness of having a toxin inserted in your body. This article, mind you, is more than 8 years old. Just because it was FDA approved doesn't mean its good for you. And its scary how when you google "Botox Cons" you have to search hi and low to find another article besides Mr. Lemonicks, who's neither a doctor, nor has made an updated article available.

All the celebrities are doing it! So why shouldn't we?! And then again, a lot of celebrities have also committed suicide. There's no need to discuss why we shouldn't base our life altering decisions on the whims of the rich and famous.

Don't be fooled, chances are, you can die. And it has happened- the toxin begins shutting down your organs one by one until you're just a pretty little porcelain cadaver. Is it really worth it? That depends how important your life is to you, of course. But I rather live long and age gracefully, proud of my real face, one I can move and use in all its dexterity, versus having a fish face (at best) or croak before my time.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

2010 has gone, and not without leaving serious imprints. We started off the year with a groundbreaking (literally) 7.0 magnitude earthquake that killed tens of thousands and injured other thousands. Reports calculate around 230,000 lost their lives when the epicenter hit Port-au-Prince, the Haitian Capital on January 12. Like a chorus, Chile followed, with an 8.8 magnitude quake, and so did China, with a 6.9 magnitude- and many other affected areas around the world.

On March 16th, Uganda's World Heritage Site, the Kusubi Tombs were destroyed by fire. No one truly knows how or why it happened, but it's a shame such an integral piece of history is now only contained in pictures and memories..

Kusubi Tombs in Uganda

On May 20, Five paintings worth €100 million were stolen from the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Not sure what the thinking behind that was. After all, why have something you can't show off or brag about without facing arrest, federal and national charges? Who would buy something everyone is looking for? I mean we're not talking about a pair of red socks that would blend in if you're wearing boots and long pants.

"Hey Joe, is that Picasso's Le pigeon aux petits pois?" "Why yes, it is... The original one, too!""Wasn't that one stolen from the museum?"
"Well I purchased it from a noble source.."

Like really. You'd have better luck selling the bong Miley Cyrus used to intensify her IQ.

Besides the hundreds of tribal, country and international level conflicts killing hundreds, we also had a moment of entertainment as the World Cup unraveled in the heart of Africa, reeling spectators, fans and hopefuls from every nation to follow every game with intensity.

The populars fell hard and fast, with Italy and France not even making it to Quarter Finals, Brazil and Portugal sporting the label as World's Biggest Let Downs and the Koreas being epic fails. However, there were also unlikely underdogs that shock and awed, like Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Uruguay. In the end however, there can only be one Winner, and Spain conquered like it hadn't done since the Spanish influenza in 1918.

July 25th, Wikileaks, the controversial website that posts military and government secrets, unleashed 90,000 internal reports on the war in Afghan. What world would we be living in if we can't read, watch, and comment on every confidential matter the government is lying and hiding to us about from the comfort of our smart phone?

Indonesia suffered the toll of both an earthquake and repeat eruptions from Mount Merapi in October. Between both disasters, over 600 lives were lost.

October 13, however, positive news captivated the world for a couple days for a change, while 33 miners were brought to the surface of the earth after nearly 3 months in absolute darkness. During that time, Ninavstheworld posted information and links to live stream of the footage. It was also the month my blog came to be, bringing you a daily dose of nonsense. :)

Nov. 17, researchers at CERN trapped, wait for it.. Anti-matter for the sixth of a second. That's right, for a split of a split of a split of a nanosec, they captured.. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Earth shattering, huh? It's wonderful how millions of dollars are spent on these experiments where scientists observe the universe comprised of matter and wonder if there exists places where anti-matter exist, and whether they can harness that anti-matter. In fact, its considered one of the greatest unsolved problems in physics.

This is a representation of antimatter, also known anti-hydrogen.

December 2nd, NASA informed of a new Arsenic-based life form in Cali- and no, it wasn't Katy Perry, or her daisy dukes.

Good thing for pictures. All I got was a sleep deprivation headache.

December 21 I stared out of my window at 2:00 am squinting at a foggy night sky trying to make out the moon. As you will recall, it was the first total lunar eclipse coinciding with the northern winter solstice/southern summer solstice that last took place in 1638. At that point, Galileo had just lost his vision and missed out on the eclipse- and I had 20/20 and couldn't see jack. Thanks, Clouds.

And so closed another year, the beginning of a new decade, and the hope of a world for a better tomorrow. And then we woke up. Well, at least you can keep coming back to my blog and filling up on nonsense to pass the day, the hours, and the year. :)

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The Recipe For Awesome

Me, in a nutshell: Every decision is a learning experience, every day a vessel that draws us closer to our goals. Simply put- I am young, constantly musing, and always writing. I love to produce abstract, colorful and sometimes unusual ideas in written form and then present them to anyone with an open mind. I blog because writing is my gift, my passion, and my goal in life. And one key thing: People can benefit from seeing things in a different light.

Me, sauteed in Italian dressing: I'm the author behind Nina vs The World, an op/ed,social media tailored, at times rant-ish, and at others insightful blog on current events and views.